The world was quiet again—but it was the kind of quiet that felt unnatural. Not peace, not rest. A breath held too long.
Elira stood on the temple's sun-drenched steps, the wind pulling at her cloak. Below, Aerthalin stretched into green valleys and healing fields, but she knew better now. The dream she had escaped—the illusion—wasn't just a cruel trick of her mind. It had been a message. A warning.
"Too vivid to be madness," she whispered. "Too real to be just pain."
Caelen stepped up beside her. The sun framed his silhouette, golden across the edges of his hair. His eyes were the same, but they held more now—grief, gratitude, a love sharpened by loss narrowly avoided.
"You've been quiet," he said, watching her face.
Elira nodded slowly. "Because I saw what's coming. Not just once. Again. Again and again."
Caelen's hand touched hers, firm. "Then we stop it before it begins."
The Weeping Blade hung at his side once more, its runes faint but pulsing—a heartbeat in steel. Elira looked at it, then at her own reflection in the polished stone beneath her feet. She didn't feel like the same woman who had wandered through that dream garden. That Elira had broken and rebuilt herself out of memory.
This Elira knew better.
"The illusion wasn't just memory," she said. "It showed me something else. Cities dimming. Children who couldn't cry. People forgetting how to love. I felt it—and if I felt it, it means it's already begun."
Caelen's eyes narrowed. "Then the war didn't end. It just changed shape."
Behind them, the Priestess of the Heart approached, her robes whispering against the stone. "You are correct. The final curse of the Hollow Lord was not death, but doubt. It was seeded in emotion itself. Many will not even know they are infected."
Elira turned sharply. "How do we fight something that hides in hearts?"
The Priestess extended a small bundle wrapped in soft white cloth. Inside lay a crystal—not black like the void, but translucent, and vibrating faintly. "This was found beneath the Heart when you awoke. It reacted to your curse and your love. It is not just a key. It's a tether to what is real."
Caelen took it gently. It pulsed warmly in his palm.
"Then we use it," he said. "We track the places where numbness spreads. We undo it. One thread at a time."
Elira looked at him. The vision of the future still haunted her—her walking alone, long after he was gone. But she pushed it down. It wasn't truth. It didn't have to be.
"I'll follow wherever this leads," she said. "But this time, we take others with us. No more dying alone. No more fighting alone."
Caelen smiled. "Agreed."
They descended the temple together. At the gates, a new dawn broke across Aerthalin—soft and uncertain. The world didn't know it still needed saving.
But they did.
And they would not let kindness fall again.